Android 2.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

You know how all the bigtime Android iterations are named after desserts? Do you also see how the titles of these deserts have been released in alphabetical order? These Android titles go like so: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, and Honeycomb. This last version is the first tablet-specific version of Android and should, based on what we know at the moment, be considered as being developed aside from the main Android bloodline. That said, the next version's name has been "leaked" by a Google developer by the name of Romain Guy: Ice Cream Sandwich.

This weekend, Google celebrated the 119th anniversary of the creation of the Sundae, that yummy soda fountain confection of ice cream, fudge, nuts and whipped cream with a cherry on top. Yummy dessert to be sure. But blogs are ablaze that it's something more than a delicious ice cream parfait. Some think it's the new flavor of Android.

In a surprise call to Phandroid, an anonymous source "familiar with the matter," as these things often go, has let the world know that Honeycomb will indeed be making its way to handsets, but not in the way anyone expected it to. Instead of evolving Android 2.3 Gingerbread to include elements from Honeycomb, they'll be toasting up an essentially brand new version of Android by the name of, you guessed it, Ice Cream.

Today there's some talk going around, some words being pushed that are re-stirring the sweet rumors that is Honeycomb supporting smartphones as well as tablets. Android 3.0 Honeycomb is a version of the OS created specifically to work well with larger devices, especially tablets. What's been discovered today is the fact that although Honeycomb will open in its default resolution of 1280x768 pixels in WXGA, changing the screen setting (in the emulator running the Honeycomb SDK released a couple days ago) to WVGA, a different shell user interface is launched, this one lacking basically everything on the homescreen with launcher crashing soon afterward.

Take a walk with me for a moment down a road into the future. Let us begin with a screenshot that's just popped up on Engadget and originated from GizmoFusion (on the left, below.) It shows an option to Sync Music, this option set right beside options to Sync other things like contacts, Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, and Calendar. This screenshot supposedly comes from an advanced version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread - Engadget hypothesizes it may come from this fabled Android 2.4 (also Gingerbread) build we've been hearing so much about.

Last night we gave you a bit of a news bit that had to do with both an FCC filing and a video that showed a German fellow holding a phone that appeared to be a Nexus S device running Android 2.4 (this video and FCC filing are in the gallery below, or you can take a [click back] to that post if you'd like as well.) Now what we see today, courtesy of MobiFlip, is a closeup picture of a screen of a German language based phone that again says its Nexus S phone and is running Android 2.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich.)

What in the world is going on here? The story goes - and note we're sort of reciting what Engadget's got on their mind before I give you a whiff of what we're thinking - that this Samsung GT-i9023 (keep that number in mind) which is passing the FCC with AWS 3G (T-Mobile's band), is the same phone that a weirdo group of German homies BestBoyZ were holding in a video that was also running Android 2.4 Ice Cream Sandwich since the baseband version on the About screen is yes, you guessed it, i9023.

Oh Jason Kincaid, you lucky fellow. Kincaid is a writer for TechCrunch, and has firsthand heard (from no less than Andy Rubin, the Android chief) that the next version of Android (we're thinking 2.4) will be called Ice Cream Sandwich. Up until now we weren't sure what it'd be called at all, with best guesses being Ice Cream because of the whole alphabetical order deal (Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, and now Ice Cream.) This factoid was brought to the world via a simple passing conversation. Wild.